I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap,...My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and ti...red and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

... if there are no waving flags and marching songs at the barricades as Walter marches out with his little battalion, it is not b...ecause the battle lacks nobility. On the contrary, he has picked up in his way, still imperfect and wobbly in his small view of human destiny.... He becomes, in spite of those who are too intrigued with despair and hatred of man to see it, King Oedipus refusing to tear out his eyes, but attacking the oracle instead. He is that last Jewish patriot manning his rifle at Warsaw.... He is Anne Frank, still believing in people; he is the nine small heroes of Little Rock; he is Michelangelo creating David and Beethoven bursting forth with the Ninth Symphony. He is all these things because he has finally reached out in his tiny moment and caught that sweet essence which is human dignity, and it shines like the old star-touched dream that is in his eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting a...nd attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

... up to this date, I have never been shut up in a separate room, or hedged off with any observances. My study, all the study I h...ave attained to, is the little 2nd drawing room where all the (feminine) life of the house goes on; and I don't think I have ever had two hours undisturbed (except at night, when everybody is in bed) during my whole literary life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Although its growth may seem to have been slow, it is to be remembered that it is not a shrub, or plant, to shoot up in the summer... and wither in the frosts. The Red Cross is a part of us--it has come to stay--and like the sturdy oak, its spreading branches shall yet encompass and shelter the relief of the nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, c...arry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the y...ears it gets to be long enough for you pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. It's another thing, though, to hold up that cloth for inspection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »